Houdini problem with rendering to render view.

[Anonymous]

I am having a problem trying to render a very simple scene to the Render View pannel. It renders to MPlay with out a problem. It gets stuck at the generating scene part.

Houdini 17.0.353 and appropriate Arnold plugin.

Thanks,

Steve

[Stephen.Blair]

Increase the Arnold log verbosity and check the Arnold log

[Anonymous]

I have the log I don't see anything wrong, but I really don't know what I am looking at.

Qt Warn: External WM_DESTROY received for QWidgetWindow(0x15d858d60, name="RE_WindowWindow") , parent: QWindow(0x0) , transient parent: QWindow(0x0)
00:00:00 785MB | log started Mon Nov 26 13:46:16 2018
00:00:00 785MB | Arnold 5.2.1.0 [7c7c9701] windows icc-17.0.2 oiio-1.7.17 osl-1.9.9 vdb-4.0.0 clm-1.0.3.513 rlm-12.4.2 2018/10/19 21:35:58
00:00:00 785MB | running on Puget-171184, pid=11016
00:00:00 785MB | 2 x Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2697 v4 @ 2.30GHz (36 cores, 72 logical) with 65420MB
00:00:00 785MB | Nvidia driver version 416.81
00:00:00 785MB | GPU 0: GeForce GTX 1080 @ 1733MHz (compute 6.1) with 8192MB (5925MB available)
00:00:00 785MB | GPU 1: GeForce GTX 1080 @ 1733MHz (compute 6.1) with 8192MB (8079MB available)
00:00:00 785MB | GPU 2: GeForce GTX 1080 @ 1733MHz (compute 6.1) with 8192MB (8079MB available)
00:00:00 785MB | GPU 3: GeForce GTX 1080 @ 1733MHz (compute 6.1) with 8192MB (8079MB available)
00:00:00 785MB | Windows 8 Professional (version 6.2, build 9200)
00:00:00 785MB | soft limit for open files raised from 2048 to 2048
00:00:00 785MB |
00:00:00 785MB | loading plugins from C:/Users/Steven/htoa/htoa-3.2.0_r9e1313b_houdini-17.0.352/htoa-3.2.0_r9e1313b_houdini-17.0.352/arnold\plugins ...
00:00:00 785MB | loading plugins from C:/Users/Steven/htoa/htoa-3.2.0_r9e1313b_houdini-17.0.352/htoa-3.2.0_r9e1313b_houdini-17.0.352/arnold\drivers ...
00:00:00 785MB | loaded 6 plugins from 4 lib(s) in 0:00.02
00:00:00 785MB | [htoa.session] Session OpId: 15
00:00:00 785MB | [htoa.session] SOHO mode: generate
00:00:00 785MB | [metadata] loading metadata file: C:/Users/Steven/htoa/htoa-3.2.0_r9e1313b_houdini-17.0.352/htoa-3.2.0_r9e1313b_houdini-17.0.352/arnold/metadata/cameras.mtd
00:00:00 785MB | [metadata] loading metadata file: C:/Users/Steven/htoa/htoa-3.2.0_r9e1313b_houdini-17.0.352/htoa-3.2.0_r9e1313b_houdini-17.0.352/arnold/metadata/lights.mtd
00:00:00 785MB | [metadata] loading metadata file: C:/Users/Steven/htoa/htoa-3.2.0_r9e1313b_houdini-17.0.352/htoa-3.2.0_r9e1313b_houdini-17.0.352/arnold/metadata/operators.mtd
00:00:00 785MB | [metadata] loading metadata file: C:/Users/Steven/htoa/htoa-3.2.0_r9e1313b_houdini-17.0.352/htoa-3.2.0_r9e1313b_houdini-17.0.352/arnold/metadata/options.mtd
00:00:00 785MB | [metadata] loading metadata file: C:/Users/Steven/htoa/htoa-3.2.0_r9e1313b_houdini-17.0.352/htoa-3.2.0_r9e1313b_houdini-17.0.352/arnold/metadata/shaders.mtd
00:00:00 785MB | [metadata] loading metadata file: C:/Users/Steven/htoa/htoa-3.2.0_r9e1313b_houdini-17.0.352/htoa-3.2.0_r9e1313b_houdini-17.0.352/arnold/metadata/shapes.mtd
00:00:00 785MB | [htoa.session] Camera: /obj/cam1
00:00:00 790MB | [htoa.object.rop] Generating ROP /out/arnold1
00:00:00 790MB | [htoa.object.camera] Generating camera /obj/cam1
00:00:00 790MB | [htoa.object.geometry] Generating /obj/geo1
00:00:00 790MB | [class std::map<struct AtNode *,class std::vector<class std::basic_string<char,struct std::char_traits<char>,class std::allocator<char> >,class std::allocator<class std::basic_string<char,struct std::char_traits<char>,class std::allocator<char> > > >,struct std::less<struct AtNode *>,class std::allocator<struct std::pair<struct AtNode * const,class std::vector<class std::basic_string<char,struct std::char_traits<char>,class std::allocator<char> >,class std::allocator<class std::basic_string<char,struct std::char_traits<char>,class std::allocator<char> > > > > > > __cdecl htoa::pygeo::Object::build] translate as: geo
00:00:00 790MB | [htoa.object.light] Generating skydome light /obj/arnold_light1
00:00:00 790MB | [htoa.material] Generating shader /shop/arnold_vopnet1/standard_surface1
00:00:00 790MB | [htoa.texture] Converted 0 textures in 0:00:00 (0 skipped, 0 errors)
00:00:00 791MB | [htoa.session] SOP cache cleared. 22 nodes unloaded.
00:00:00 791MB | [ass] writing scene to c:\users\steven\appdata\local\temp\houdini_temp\htoa_Steven\11016_df3e80a5-c91d-4462-815d-788991ce8e2f.ass (mask=0xFFFF) ...
00:00:00 791MB | [ass] wrote 2671 bytes, 9 nodes in 0:00.00
00:00:00 791MB |
00:00:00 791MB | releasing resources
00:00:00 789MB | Arnold shutdown

[Stephen.Blair]

Normally the actual render would start after that.

If you create a new Arnold ROP and use that in the Render View, does it still not render?

[Anonymous]

I just tried that and get the same results, it just says "Generating scene". MPlay renders fine.

[Stephen.Blair]

Can you get a Process Monitor log? Then we can check whether something weird is going on, and maybe even spot the problem.

1. Download processmonitor from https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon and unzip it somewhere
2. Run Procmon.exe from where you unzipped it
3. Start capturing events
4. In Houdini, render to the Render View
5. After the render doesn't happen, stop the capture in Process Monitor, then go to File -> Save. Zip up the log file and put somewhere where I can get it.

thanks

[Anonymous]

Hopefully I completed the process correctly. Here is a link to the file:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/m4hvux2wezwyimm/Process_file.zip?dl=0

Let me know if the information is usefull or if I messed it up and I will redo it.

Thanks,

Steve

[Stephen.Blair]

@Steven Shook Oops, that's the help file for Process Monitor. The log will be a .PML file.

[Anonymous]

That is what happens when you get old, you can no longer depend on your mouse skills.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/cl1d8zpkbyxza98/Logfile.zip?dl=0

Steve

[Anonymous]

Any results?

[Stephen.Blair]

Sorry, I can't tell why it's not working

All I can see is that there's no communication happening after the ass file is exported and read back in.

• Normally Houdini exports the scene to ASS
• Then HtoA reads the ASS file, does the render, and sends it back to Houdini.

But in this case, nothing is sent back, and given that there's no Arnold log, it looks like the render doesn't happen. But there's nothing in the Process Monitor log that tells what the problem is.

[Anonymous]

Thank you, maybe the next up date to the latest production build will fix the problem.

Have a nice day,

Steve

[Anonymous]

Hi, I have updated to the latest build .416 and the problem still occurs I can see where the ASS is written out to:

"00:00:00 795MB | [ass] writing scene to c:\users\steven\appdata\local\temp\houdini_temp\htoa_Steven\30064_c92a8f92-0d41-4b18-bece-69a6584d9b4b.ass (mask=0xFFFF) ... 00:00:00 795MB | [ass] wrote 8208 bytes, 9 nodes in 0:00.00 00:00:00 795MB | 00:00:00 795MB | releasing resources"

As soon as the file is written it is removed. Not sure if that is the correct action. I did make sure the the write only flag on the file was removed. Same behavior happened afterwards.

[Stephen.Blair]

That's normal (the ass file being removed). The ass file is deleted after HtoA reads it back in for rendering. The sequence is:

• Houdini exports the ass file
• HtoA (hick.exe) reads in the ass file
• ass file removed (cleaned up)
• render starts

[Anonymous]

Then everything works for me up until the "render starts" part for the render view. I works ok for MPlay and rendering an output file.

Any suggestions?

Thank you and have a great holiday season,

Steve

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I am still experiencing the same problem even when I have updated to the latest Arnold builds and the Houdini 17.0.459 build.

Any ideas where to look for a solution?

Thank you,

Steve

[Anonymous]

@ Steven Shook ,

So have you been able to resolve this issue ?
it has been quite sometime and i think i ran into similar issue as well.
Mind to share if there's cure ?
Thanks in advance.

[matthias.tatge]

I got the same problem right now, ipr in render view doesn't start, but Rendering to mplay works fine... Pretty annoying to not be able to use ipr while shading my environment. Is it working for you now?